Jon AS, list, I’m looking forward to the part of our slow read that delves into Peirce’s classification of sciences, as I think that will explain what André means by saying that phaneroscopists are “pre-truthists.” But you’re right, some of the ideas floated in the other thread show what happens when people try to fit phaneroscopy (or the universal categories) into a preconceived framework such as a semiotic theory. For instance, one result is a confusion of Firstness with iconicity.
The pragmatic relationships among phaneroscopy, mathematics, logic and semeiotic are actually quite complex and sometimes recursive, as I hope will become clear as we take a closer look at Peirce’s texts on the subject. For today I’d just like to share a paragraph from André De Tienne’s 1993 paper on “Peirce’s Definitions of the Phaneron”: [[ Our awareness of a phaneron is always total and puts it into our “Immediate and Complete possession” (MS 645:3, 1909). The most important feature is the immediacy, the directness, with which one is aware of the phaneron. The appearance and the mind are conflated, which means that there is nothing to mediate between the two: there is no intervening sign. We are put facie ad faciem before the very phaneron itself, Peirce says (MS 645:5). Direct awareness is a face-to-face encounter, which is the same as saying that that which appears to a mind is not represented. A seeming is not a representation, at least not in the first place, and thus a phaneron never conveys any cognitive information. Direct awareness is therefore not to be confounded with cognitive intuition, which is a faculty whose existence Peirce denies. It follows, then, that the mode of manifestation of a phaneron must be in some essential respect quite different from that of a sign.] (De Tienne 1993, 282) ] The “direct awareness” at the heart of phaneroscopy requires its observations to be pre-theoretical and pre-logical (and a fortiori, pre-truth!). But as Peirce said, it takes a ““great effort not to be influenced” by one’s habitual preconceptions (especially if one believes that all awareness is semiotic, i.e. mediated). This is exactly the kind of opinion that one has to set aside in order to develop a well-grounded conception of semiosis is in the first place. Gary f. From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jon Alan Schmidt Sent: 15-Jun-21 12:17 Gary F., List: I agree that the last line on this slide is especially important, but several recent posts have exhibited evidence of the mistake described in the one right above it. In fact, at times I myself have surely been guilty of jumping too quickly from phaneroscopy into semeiotic. The problem is that if we focus exclusively on representation and mediation, which are paradigmatic manifestations of 3ns, then we effectively skip right over 1ns as quality and 2ns as reaction. Moreover, Peirce makes it very clear that phaneroscopy is an activity in which every inquirer must engage. CSP: Understand me well. My appeal is to observation,--observation that each of you must make for himself. (CP 5.52, EP 2:154, 1903) CSP: There is nothing quite so directly open to observation as phanerons; and since I shall have no need of referring to any but those which (or the like of which) are perfectly familiar to everybody, every reader can control the accuracy of what I am going to say about them. Indeed, he must actually repeat my observations and experiments for himself, or else I shall more utterly fail to convey my meaning than if I were to discourse of effects of chromatic decoration to a man congenitally blind. ... The reader, upon his side, must repeat the author's observations for himself, and decide from his own observations whether the author's account of the appearances is correct or not. (CP 1.286-287, 1904) Thanks, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 6:10 AM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Continuing our slow read, here is the next slide of André De Tienne’s slideshow posted on the Peirce Edition Project (iupui.edu) <https://peirce.iupui.edu/publications.html#presentations> site. (You will notice André’s characteristic sense of humor here, but the last line should be taken quite seriously.) Text: “Phaneroscopy”? What a strange word! Can it possibly mean anything? Is it really a science? How come I have never heard of it before? Can I get a Ph.D. in phaneroscopy? In what university? Are phaneroscopists well paid? Is their job useful and interesting? Does it help save lives? Some say that Peirce did everything that needed to be done in phaneroscopy, and that everything else is semiotics. Is that right? Is it true that phaneroscopists never assert anything true and yet never lie? Are they post-truthists? [No! They are pre-truthists!]
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the message and nothing in the body. More at https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/help/user-signoff.html . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
